Am I psychic? Or are these anti-nuke morons that predictable?

The no-nukes crowd haven't surprised me.

The Japanese are still fighting a valiant fight against a reactor that threatens to melt down, possibly at the cost of plant workers' lives, and these limp-wristed panty-waists are ever so ready to say they told us so.

Really?

I listened to a liberal guest on Hannity's radio program this evening argue against building more nuclear power plants in the U.S., citing the drama going in Japan right now.  Never mind that the power plant was hit with a 9.0 Richter scale earthquake followed by a tsunami.  Not something that happens every day.  Hannity wisely framed it in the context of risk versus reward.

It seemed as though his guest, however, prefers to live in a world where everyone is safe all the time.  But that world doesn't exist.

I've never understood why the global warming folks aren't behind nuclear power.  Pound for pound, it has the smallest carbon footprint for the most energy produced.  Beyond the machinery used to build the power plant and the mining of the uranium fuel, the plant has no carbon footprint.  The cloud of vapor you see coming out of the nuclear power plant's cooling towers?  That's gaseous dihydrogen monoxide, a lethal chemical referred to in the Bible as having nearly wiped out mankind in the days of Noah and his ark.

It seems liberals have unrealistic expectations when it comes to many forms of alternative energy:

• Solar power requires sunshine, lots of it, to generate low current.  For somewhere like Arizona, it's ideal, provided you can convince the environmentalists to give up hundreds of square miles of desert to power a small town.
• Wind energy is great provided you live somewhere that's windy.  But ironically, the wind turbines are stopped and the blades feathered in strong winds to prevent damage.
• Geothermal energy is by far the most sustainable, but we're limited by where we can drill to relatively shallow depths, because the deeper you drill, the longer it takes for the investment to pay for itself.  Geothermal advocates say the energy can sustain civilization for centuries.  It may take that long to pay for itself.
• Hydro-electric energy is good.  Hoover Dam can meet the electricity needs of the American Southwest, but again, there is location and cost.

Sure, we could switch to these technologies tomorrow.  What do we do in the meantime?  Without on-demand power generation like coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear, our civilization will starve.  Its development will be retarded.

Hannity's guest also commented on he wanted to see our energy consumption stay where it's at, alluding to adoption of the Volt as a way to do that.

*face-palm*

1. The Volt costs around 80k to make, Government Motors sells it at a loss for 40k.  Consumer Reports wasn't impressed.
2. If a majority of Americans buy the Volt, we will double the load on the electric grid.  Where are we going to get the extra electricity to supply that power?  Windmills?  No, we'll have to burn more fossil fuels.  In fact, after factoring in the step-down transformers between the power plant and your wall outlet, even using optimistic figures for the efficiency of the transformers, you'll probably burn more fossil fuel per year than if you just got a non-hybrid gas car.

Nuclear reactors continue to get safer.  Newer pebble-bed reactors use impermeable laws of physics rather than electro-mechanical devices to control the reaction.  The Fukushima reactor is 40+ years old.  I'm reminded of how environmentalists stopped construction of the Big Stone II power plant in Minnesota.  It was a coal power plant that had newer, more efficient scrubber technology that would've actually resulted in more efficiency and less pollution than staying with Big Stone I alone.  But environmentalist dogma trumped facts.

It's getting to be a mantra around here:  "Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up."